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When I started trying to earn a full-time living from blogging about two years ago (it seems much longer), I concentrated on quantity rather than quality.  I know, I know.  I keep harping on about quality of your posts so forgive me while I tell you about my sordid past.

I used to build what I called “$1 a day blogs”.  These were blogs that were intended to make a single dollar each day or $365 a year from Adsense and affiliate programs.  The idea was to churn out an average of one a day for a year, giving me an income of 365 x 365 = $133,000 a year.  These were all hand-built blogs with original content and used only white-hat SEO.  After a couple of weeks of building these blogs I realized I had developed a system of sorts.  There were about 10 simple steps needed for each blog and each could be built in three or four hours. As it happened, I lost interest after a month or so and started to concentrate on my main business blogs which were starting to receive regular repeat visitors.

Looking through my affiliate and adsense stats this morning I saw that many of these blogs are still there and earning money.  Some earn almost nothing, others earn two or three dollars a day.  The average earnings are actually slightly above $1 - an average of $1.35 a day for each blog. I have done nothing with these blogs since the day I built them. 

Which brings me to the point of this post.  I know some people will prefer this blogging approach of churning out multiple blogs without too much effort. I’ve moved on from these but I still have my rough hand-written notes of the system for creating them, including SEO optimization and marketing notes. If there is enough interest I will type these into legible format and either add them as a post or as a downloadable PDF file.  Leave a comment if you are interested.

Good advice from BlogTrafficSchool.com:

How to Announce a Blog

“The reality is you have to pay your dues for success online just as much as you do in the real world. Nearly all big time bloggers have a history of hard and consistent work…”

Think of this as Blogging 101.  These are the basics of any blog (or website) promotion. I realize that you probably know some of the information in this post but how much of it have you implemented?  It’s often easy to chase after the latest and hottest promotion method from some self-styled guru,  but if you forget these basics you will not have a foundation on which to build more advanced marketing methods.  I will cover more advanced methods, including the “secrets” in all those $*7 eBooks, in posts over the next  few weeks. 

In no particular order, these are my top 10 promotion methods which every blog should include:

1.  Quality counts.  I know I’ve harped on about this at length in previous posts but remember that blog posts will only get linked to willingly if they are worthy.  Visitors will only bookmark if they like what they read. 

2.  Articles.  There are many article directories eager to post your article with embedded links back to your blog.  Most of these are a complete waste of time, especially those that do not have a human review the article.  The best, and the one I always use, is EzineArticles.  Google loves EzineArticles and you will often find their articles on the front page of searches.  This is still the best way of getting an indirect link high in the Google SERPs.   There are some better ways of using the article directories, tweaks which will give 10 times the traffic, and I will cover these in a separate post in a few days.  Aim to write at least one quality article a week on the topic of your blog.

3.  Make sure a link to your RSS feed is readily available.  I like to include subscribe buttons for the major RSS readers in the sidebar.  Subscribers are the fuel that power your blog.  Make it easy for them.  You can also add an RSS to email option.  Feedblitz offers one for free.

4.  Tell your friends about your blog.  Have them tell their friends.  Use this for both online and offline contacts.  Linking to your blog in your email signature is an easy solution.  Are you embarrassed to let your  friends to see your blog?  See tip #1.

5.  Get involved with your blogging neighbors.  Most niches are like communities, bloggers are by nature a sociable bunch and are happy to share tips and chat over IM or email.  Read all the major blogs on similar topics and leave thoughtful comments on posts you like (or dislike).  Join in the conversations on hot topics.  Consider linkbaiting.

6.  Post regularly.  The frequency may depend on your topic but aim to post at least once a day for the first 90 days.  Search engines love frequently updated content. 

7.  Submit to blog and RSS directories. The specialized directories were not created equally, so submit only to the quality directories.  A list of the top 55 are at RSSTop55. if you want to save time, you can use  specialized software - I use  RSS Submit. I find that regular website directories are a waste of time.  They either take years to check and approve your site or are filled with spam.  In any case, search engines discount all but the top half-dozen.

8. Most forums allow you to add a signature link to your posts.  Make quality posts in forums for your blog topic.  You can often rewrite blog posts for this, but make sure you do rewrite - search engines frown on duplicate content.  Link back to your blog, or relevant permalinks from your blog in your signature.  Get known as the guy who is helpful and provides useful information.

7.  Remember the search engines.  Include keywords about your niche in a couple of posts on each page.  For instance, if your blog is about stamp collecting, mention the phrase “stamp collecting” as well as related keywords such as penny black, postal history, stamp catalogs and stamp album.  Don’t make the mistake of just repeating “stamp collecting” over and over.  Search engines aren’t that dumb.  They look for on-topic keywords.  Make your titles descriptive.  Use “Stamp Grading and Condition for Collectors” rather than just “Grading”.  Not sure what other words or phrases to use?  Go to Google and type in your main niche search term.  All the other words and phrases you need are on the pages of the first 3 results.

10 Go social.  There are dozens of social bookmarking sites springing up every month. Create social bookmark chicklets or links for Digg, Delicious and any others you personally use on every post.  Look for bookmarking sites in your topic.  Don’t overdo it - no more than 3 links or it starts to look spammy.  There are a number of advance techniques for using these sites - I will cover these in a post later in this series.  These advanced techniques, incidentally, are the main content of one well-known $297 site promotion course.

Your special bonus tip, if you order in the next 30 minutes… sorry I couldn’t resist that, but here’s one final tip.

11.  To quote from Winston Churchill: “Never give in. Never give in.  Never, never, never, never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense.”  Keep plugging away, the visitors may not come today, nor even next week, but if you blog is worth reading the viral effect will take over and soon you will be moving to a dedicated server.

You’ll notice I haven’t including linking in the above list.  Aren’t all the gurus telling us that we need massive amounts of links?  We must send out hundreds of emails offering link exchanges?  Well, maybe we did last year, but a year is a long time in SEO.  Getting links too fast or from the wrong neighborhoods will do more harm than good.  Let your links grow naturally and in their own good time.  There are of course techniques to speed up the process but these deserve a post of their own.

I will expand and elaborate on many of these in future posts, including some twists that will multiply your traffic ten-fold, but for now base your blog promotion on these solid foundations.

Here’s to your first 10,000.

One of the central tenets of marketing nowadays is to identify your Unique Selling Proposition or USP  before launching a marketing campaign.  The USP is the feature or benefit that your product offers that the competitors do not.  An advertisement must make the proposition that you will receive a certain benefit from purchasing this product.  The proposition must also be unique, something that your competitors do not have. Something that the customer cannot obtain elsewhere.

The estimate of the number of blogs in the blogosphere vary wildly.  Some estimates say 10 million.  Some say 60 million plus.  The number of active blogs, those with a posting within the last 30 days, is much lower.  Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that there are 5 million active blogs.  These 5 million are your competitors.  Ouch.  That’s a lot of competition. 

A lot of the conventional advice on Internet Marketing is to first find a highly-focused niche and build your website or blog around it.  Most marketers, and you must think of yourself as one of these, target a specific niche.  Even the world’s largest manufacturers carefully target specific market segments to maximize the return on their advertisements.  There’s a lot of information on the internet about finding a niche, so I won’t repeat it here.  Read Find Your Niche or Niche Marketing if you need help with this.

Unfortunately, as the market becomes crowded, the niches get smaller and smaller and harder to market.  And believe me, it’s getting crowded out there.  The experts would have you build an entire website all for only 50 searches a month.  My philosophy is to find a larger niche, one that can support 20 or 30 thousand visitors a day and then to develop a USP that pulls you to the front of the crowd.  This of course is hard.  Much harder than finding the niche in the first place.

Your USP is more than the subject of your blog.  For example “I write about building widgets” may be a description of what you do but it isn’t a USP. 

To give yourself ideas, write out a list of benefits that you have.  Benefits, not features.  The length of your posts is a feature, the problem the post solves is a benefit.  List all the positives that make your blog special.  Make sure you focus only on benefits to your visitor, they don’t care about you, only themselves and their own needs.  Move beyond the basics common to all websites in your niche, and look to the criteria that web surfer’s use to decide which blog or website to bookmark. 

What makes you an expert on the subject?  Do you hold the world record for fastest widget building?  Maybe your USP is “World record widget builder reveals his secrets”. 

If you can, look towards solving an immediate or “painful” problem.  A great example of this is the slogan used by Dominos Pizza - “Pizza delivered in 30 minutes or it’s free”.  The kids are hungry and the parents are exhausted.  Dominos promises to take away their pain in 30 minutes or less.

So, what is your blog’s USP?